Success or Snub? Cavalcade (6th Academy Awards Review Pt. 2)

 To see part 1, click here.

King Kong Suite~Max Steiner - King Kong

        As you can clearly tell by now, I do not think that Cavalcade was the best picture of the year-and-a-half that it came out. And, yes, I said year-and-a-half. With this ceremony, the Academy decided to reset the calendar to do away with these half-year and half-year eligibility periods. Because, let’s face it, it sounds much more impressive to call a movie the best of a given year rather than some arbitrary 12-month time period.

Thus, to ensure that this would happen, the eligibility period for the 6th Academy Awards lasted from July of 1932 to the end of 1933, creating the single longest eligibility period in Academy history. Walt Disney would be the first person to win an Academy Award for two years in a row (winning the Oscar for Best Short again with The Three Little Pigs) and one of the most hilarious gaffes in Academy history would occur when Frank Lloyd won the Oscar for Best Director for Cavalcade, the presenter simply said, “Come up and get it, Frank!” This led Frank Capra, the director of Lady for a Day, to walk up and try to take the award before finding out the mistake.

As you can guess by the 18-month eligibility period a lot of milestone movies came out for this one and, to tell you the truth, almost all of them are better than Cavalcade. The big competitions were Lady for a Day, 

which is very good though it strains credulity in the last act, A Farewell to Arms,

which is a pretty good movie that I’d recommend if you’re into old cinema, and The Private Life of Henry VIII,

which won Best Actor for Charles Laughton. Besides launching Charles Laughton’s career in America and delivering the most popular portrayal of King Henry VIII in pop culture (as a fat asshole who chews on chicken thighs while grease dribbles down his chin). It was also the first foreign movie to be a big box office hit and contributed to more foreign releases becoming widespread in America. That aside, the film is dreadfully dull though admittedly not as much as Cavalcade.

In fact, a lot of careers got made or defined that year, though, once again, most would be ignored for genre snobbery. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (pioneers of dancing scenes) got their start in Flying Down to Rio,

Mae West (pioneer of sexual double entendres whose films accelerated the Hays Code’s development) had her most defining films with She Done Him Wrong

and I’m No Angel

and Laurel and Hardy (pioneers of slapstick in talkies) made Sons of the Desert,

which is often considered their best movie (for my money, I prefer Our Relations (1936) though Sons of the Desert is a lot of fun too).

Lots of important milestones in horror happened as well during this time period. There was The Mummy

and The Invisible Man,

wherein Boris Karloff’s Imhotep and Claude Rains’ Frank Griffin would become two more iconic horror movie monsters. In addition, there was also The Most Dangerous Game (where an eccentric millionaire hunts humans for sport on his private island),

The Old Dark House (which started the haunted house genre)

and White Zombie (the first ever zombie movie).

The big snubs in terms of comedy, though, were Trouble in Paradise, Love Me Tonight and Duck Soup.

        Trouble in Paradise was another of Ernst Lubitsch’s romantic-comedies. If you don’t know who Ernst Lubitsch is, he’s the guy who directed The Love Parade (1929) and had a very distinctive filmmaking style. His characters tend to be very over-the-top and silly and usually make very lewd sexual innuendos and dark humor but still often talk about real relationship problems. When you think of the typical old-school Hollywood romance, this is the kind of movie that’s popping into your mind and Trouble in Paradise is often considered one of his best (other movies he did that I’d recommend are The Smiling Lieutenant (1931), Ninotchka (1939) and To Be or Not To Be (1942)).

Trouble in Paradise revolves around a pair of thieves (Herbert Marshall and Miriam Hopkins) who rob the CEO of a perfume company (Kay Francis). Complications arise, however, as one of the thieves ends up falling in love with the CEO and he’s torn between sticking to the heist and his feelings. It’s a fun set-up and some of the scenes between them can get very steamy for such an old movie.

Springboarding from one classic, silly musical to another, Love Me Tonight is kinda along the same vein, being a fun romantic-comedy musical starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeannette MacDonald. It does lack the more serious scenes as Lubitsch’s films but it’s still very over-the-top and has some wonderful musical scenes and tongue-in-cheek jokes. The song sequence “Isn’t It Romantic?” was a stand-out musical number at the time as it combined singing and dancing in a whole new way as the song transitions from character to character. This was yet another breakthrough in musicals at the time (though wait).

And, finally, Duck Soup which is the magnum opus of the Marx Bros. and easily the best and funniest movie they ever put out, as well as being one of the chief influences for the Looney Tunes. (The Marx Bros. also released another film during this time frame called Horse Feathers which landed them on the cover of TIME Magazine.) Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho Marx) has been elected to be the Supreme Leader (read: dictator) of the country of Freedonia. This quickly proves to be a very, very bad idea as Firefly decides to run the country straight into the ground, earning the ire of the neighboring country of Sylvania which sends a pair of spies (Chico Marx and Harpo Marx) to infiltrate and topple him.

This movie is dark and way ahead of its time, really pushing the limits of what you could get away with in pre-Hays Code Hollywood (in fact, a lot of movies this year did that; both Trouble in Paradise and A Farewell to Arms feature characters having sex). Duck Soup is a satire of people in power and how they’ll often start costly wars to satisfy their own fragile egos. Groucho Marx’s Supreme Leader Firefly makes several off-color jokes where he acknowledges that he wants to marry his royal treasurer (Margaret Dumont) and murder her to get her fortune and also has a song and dance number where he mentions shooting his subjects if they don’t do what he says.

The film would underperform at the box office as it did push people’s sensitivities a bit too far, especially with the finale, which turns World War I into one giant cartoon. It’s a shame too as it’s a damn fine comedy that I think still holds up. Some of the political commentary is genuinely timeless (for example).

Speaking of stories about blatant corruption, that allows us to seamlessly segue into our next movie, I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang.

If Duck Soup was a dark comedy warning about placing too much faith in those with power, I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang is a dramatic thriller doing the same thing. Paul Muni plays James Allen, a normal American youth who ends up getting accidentally caught on the wrong side of a robbery and is sent to rot in a prison chain gang. The plot takes a few twists and turns from there that I won’t spoil but I don’t think I’m spoiling much when I say that he escapes eventually.

This is another culturally relevant film that fell by the wayside in later years which is a shame as I think that this is a very timeless story that still holds up. I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang did what no movie before had done and showed that the lawful thing to do isn’t always the right thing to do and your government does not always have your best interests at heart. Before this, it was a tale as old as time: the cops were always the good guys and the criminals were always the bad guys.

This is the first movie to show that that is simply not true. There’s no single jerk or corrupt official that you can blame, it’s the system itself that’s the villain. This is more commonplace today but, back then, it was unheard of, and really showed the wanton cruelty of the American justice system. (And remember, this is being shown to a Great Depression audience so having to deal with this after stealing to feed yourself is not too far-fetched of a reality for your average American.)

If Cavalcade’s relevance to winning came from its analysis of the hypocrisies of the establishment, then the win should’ve definitely gone to Duck Soup or I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang. These were two of the first true anti-establishment movies and did much more to challenge the mores of society and speak about how your officials will ruin your life if it’s in their profit. Surprisingly, though, these aren’t even the biggest snubs (though Paul Muni’s understated and tragic performance should’ve definitely won Best Actor). Three of the best and most influential movies of all time came out during this time period: 42nd Street, M – Ein Stadt sucht einen Mörder (Eng. Title: M) and King Kong.

42nd Street is the archetypical backstage musical. Veteran Broadway director Julian Marsh (Warner Baxter) is hired to put on a show called Pretty Lady. The rest of the movie then details the following month from Hell as the cast and crew endlessly rehearse for the show and details all of the drama and relationships between the director, the performers, the lead actress (Bebe Daniels), the pit crew, the sleazy producer (Guy Kibbee) and newcomer, Peggy Sawyer (Ruby Keeler).

I’m honestly stunned that this didn’t win the Oscar for Outstanding Production as this seems like the kind of movie that the Academy would adore. Because, as we’ll learn time and again, if there’s one thing that people in showbusiness love, it’s movies about people in showbusiness, and this is one of the best in that genre. Every cliché that you think of when it comes to this genre comes from 42nd Street but it all works and it’s really lovable.

All of the characters are instantly likable and you understand where they’re all coming from, even when they have the downright nastiest of fights. There’s a great sense of camaraderie that’s felt and anyone who’s ever worked on a movie or theater set for this length of time under this amount of pressure immediately knows what I’m talking about.

It’s interesting that 42nd Street is billed as a musical and often tops many lists of the best musicals of all time but it’s not really a flat-out musical. Like The Broadway Melody (1929), the song and dance numbers aren’t done to reveal the character’s emotions, they’re just all working on Broadway. But you don’t even see many musical numbers in that regard either. Just small snippets as the characters prepare for the big night.

The only real musical is the finale where they have the night of the performance and it is incredible. The final performance of Pretty Lady is the first truly epic musical number in cinematic history. While musical numbers before this were fun little song and dance numbers, the climax of 42nd Street features dozens (if not hundreds) of performers with sweeping shots, spinning sets and complex cinematography. This is effectively the precursor to the epic musicals that would become more popular as the genre went on.

M is also a big deal in filmmaking. This is another foreign film that was actually released in Germany in 1931 as M – Ein Stadt sucht einen Mörder but didn’t make its way to the States until 1933 where, rather than translate whatever Ein Stadt sucht einen Mörder means, they just called it M. The film takes place in Berlin as a pedophilic serial killer (Peter Lorre) has been murdering children and the police, led by Inspector Lohmann (Otto Wernicke), are stretched thin trying to find him. Things get so bad that the criminal underworld finds that they’re unable to do anything because of how hard the police are cracking down so they decide that they’re going to find the killer themselves.

The rest of the movie is a lot of fun as it turns into one big rat race between the cops and the criminals to see who can capture this guy first. It’s very clever, though, as it gets you invested seeing the whole city band together to solve this problem but then the last act turns it around to make it a cautionary tale about vigilante justice. I’m not going to spoil the ending but the climax of the film really asks a powerful question that I think is even more relevant today than when this movie first came out. It’s a very difficult conflict that very few movies, or people in general, are willing to bring up and really leaves you thinking after it’s over. What is the right thing to do in this situation?

M was also a pretty sizable step forward in sound design. There’s a lot of ancillary noise in the background that makes it sound like you’re in a city and was the first movie to use a leitmotif for a character. For most of the movie we never even see the killer but, instead, he’s characterized by his constant whistling of In the Hall of the Mountain King. So, every time the scene just takes place in a street and we hear that whistle, we immediately get a sense of dread.

This is another movie that you see frequently topping the lists of greatest movies of all time and, for that matter, greatest movie villains of all time (both with Peter Lorre as the serial killer and Gustaf Gründgens as Der Schränker, the leader of the criminal underworld). I really hope that means that people don’t forget what a great character Inspector Lohmann is though. He actually reminds me of Julian from 42nd Street as you feel just how stressed out this guy is. He’s trying his best to solve a problem that everyone’s blaming him for but he still does his job without falling into the mass hysteria that’s gripping his city.

And last, but not least, there’s King Kong, the highest-grossing movie of 1933 and one of the most famous movies from the Golden Age of Hollywood. The giant ape towering over the New York City skyline is one of the most quintessential images in cinematic history and it really sells you on the movie before you even walk into the theater. You know exactly what to expect from that idea alone: some demented movie director (Robet Armstrong) goes to shoot on a haunted island and picks up a gigantic gorilla named Kong (who is entirely uncredited and no one is quite sure of who was in that monkey suit) that he brings back to NYC as a trade show.

King Kong was a huge breakthrough in the limits of filmmaking technology at the time, particularly when it comes to special effects and music. While I don’t know if any of the effects in this movie were really considered impossible beforehand, there was never anything of that magnitude attempted. Before this, they mostly just kept it to one monster that could be accomplished with some clever make-up and camera angles. Here, Kong is 30-feet-tall and he frequently fights with other prehistoric beasts that are just as big as he is.

Also, this was one of the first, if not the first, movies to use stop-motion. (For those who don’t know, stop-motion is a film technique where you photograph a model, move it slightly, photograph it again and rinse and repeat to create the illusion of movement.) Now there’s a certain jerkiness to stop-motion that I always thought made it look pretty fake but it was still the most realistic-looking SFX back in 1933.

Because of the limitations back then, the filmmakers could get pretty creative with their effects to get the shots and creatures that they wanted, Kong himself requiring numerous different dilemmas. Sometimes it was a guy in a monkey suit walking around on miniature sets. Sometimes they would place actors in front of a green screen and splice them together with footage of stop-motion creatures. And sometimes they would just actually build a giant gorilla statue with motors in its mouth to move it up and down.

The music was also a big deal as this was the first movie to have the music actually reflect what’s going on in the movie itself, being what we more commonly associate with movie soundtracks. When it’s a sinister scene, they have low violins. When Kong himself shows up, the drums pick up at a bombastic pace. During the opening credits, you hear this big bombastic show that makes you feel like you’re about to witness the 8th wonder of the world. The best is the climax where Kong scales the Empire State Building and the music just builds as he climbs higher and higher. This, in and of itself, is one of the most famous finales in movie history and the fact that the Empire State Building was only recently completed at the time added to its relevance.

While King Kong is one of the biggest cultural icons of the 1930s, I’ll admit that I’m not the biggest fan and I do find it the weakest of these seven movies we’ve seriously talked about here. While I do respect the movie for its contribution to cinema, I don’t love the film. Large stretches of it feel more like an exhibition piece for the effects rather than having interesting characters or story and, let’s be honest here, fellas, the effects are very outdated. This prevents the movie from aging with grace though people who are more into the nitty-gritty technical sides of filmmaking tend to appreciate it in my experience.

I also find most of the characters dull and forgettable with two exceptions. The first is Carl Denham, the crazy movie director who leads the voyage. The other is Kong himself who, despite looking fake nowadays, still comes across as very endearing. He’s not a flat-out villain like other famous movie monsters as the film is more of a cautionary tale about interfering with nature. As a result, you actually end up feeling sorry for Kong more often than not. And while some of the scenes in the jungle can drag on way too long, when this movie is good, it’s really good.

Seriously, not only is Cavalcade not the best movie of this time frame, it’s probably the worst of all of the movies mentioned here. While I will give credit that some of these movies were actually nominated for Outstanding Production (e.g. 42nd Street, I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang, Trouble in Paradise), a lot weren’t. 42nd Street probably had the best chance of winning out of all the snubs but that didn’t happen for some reason. M wasn’t nominated for anything despite being a masterpiece. Neither were King Kong or Duck Soup. Hell, even going back to the horror line-up, what about The Invisible Man? Maybe, it’s not movie of the year-worthy but Claude Rains’ performance as Jack Griffin required him to commit to a performance using only his body and voice, no facial movements. You never once see his face throughout the movie and he still created a great, memorable villain. That’s some top-notch acting when you think about it and he wasn’t even nominated for anything just because the movie was a horror.

Yeah, this is definitely up there as one of the worst calls in Academy history. Calling Cavalcade the best movie of a time period that had some of the best and most influential movies of the early 30s was, without question, a…

SNUB!

Personal Favorite Movies of 1932/33:

• Duck Soup (dir. Leo McCarey)
• M - Ein Stadt sucht einen Mörder (M) (dir. Fritz Lang)
• I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang (dir. Mervyn LeRoy)
• Love Me Tonight (dir. Rouben Mamoulien)
• Sons of the Desert (dir. William A. Seiter)
• The Invisible Man (dir. James Whale)
• The Most Dangerous Game (dir. Irving Pichel & Ernest B. Schoedsack)
• The Old Dark House (dir. James Whale)
• Trouble in Paradise (dir. Ernst Lubitsch)
• 42nd Street (dir. Lloyd Bacon & Busby Berkeley)

Favorite Heroes:

• Gaston Monescu (Herbert Marshall) (Trouble in Paradise)
• Inspector Lohmann (Otto Wernicke) (M - Ein Stadt sucht einen Mörder (M))
• James Allen (Paul Muni) (I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang)
• Peggy Sawyer (Ruby Keeler) (42nd Street)
• Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy (Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy) (Sons of the Desert)

Favorite Villains:

• Der Schränker (Gustaf Gründgens) (M - Ein Stadt sucht einen Mörder (M))
• Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre) (M - Ein Stadt sucht einen Mörder (M))
• Jack Griffin (Claude Rains) (The Invisible Man)
• Kong (uncredited) (King Kong)
• Supreme Leader Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho Marx) (Duck Soup)